Hot spots are becoming more ubiquitous as the number of mobile devices increases, and further, as cellular networks seek to offload data traffic. Generally, a hot spot provides a WLAN connection for a mobile device within range for data roaming. A user that travels among hot spots can connect to many different hot spots that each require configuration.
Recent technologies such as IEEE 802.11u (promulgated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and Hot Spot 2.0 (also known as HS2 and Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint and promulgated by the Wi-Fi Alliance) make hot spot roaming easier by advertising more than just basic information to stations in the network discovery process. For example, IEEE 802.11u provides for beacons that advertise realms available for connection from a hot spot, allowing a station to determine compatibility to the realms.
However, while there are numerous available realms for which a hot spot may be able to offer service from, IEEE 802.11u only provides for three. One the one hand, by providing only three realms, beacon-processing is eased. But on the other hand, there is currently no technique for discriminating between available realms when stations request more information for available realms. As a result, numerous irrelevant realms could burden stations.
What is needed is a robust technique to dynamically generate a per-station real list for hot spot connections from a list of available realms.